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Elizabeth II HAS REIGNED in a world moving swiftly through political shifts, cultural change and technological advances. Traditional institutions of law, religion and politics have suffered loss of ...

Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born at 17 Bruton Street, London on 21 April 1926. A happy childhood was spent with her parents, the Duke and Duchess of York, and younger sister Margaret Rose. ...

Edward VIII (1936) Edward, Prince of Wales, eldest son of George V and Queen Mary, was known to the family as 'David'. Charming and informal, he was a popular prince, touring Britain and the empire, ...

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, she left three generations of heirs. They, it was expected, would reign as monarchs of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. In fact, the name survived only 16 years. In ...

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From 1127, the 80 acres adjoining the Thames was governed according to the laws of ‘The Liberty of the Bishop of Winchester’. ‘Liberty’ did not mean that everyone could do as he or she liked. The bishop provided a definition of ‘liberty’ and then required all that lived within his area to live according to it. ‘Liberty’ was another word for ‘jurisdiction’ over the manor (similar to how a modem borough council governs a district today). By the 15th century, the lengthy term ‘Liberty of the Bishop of Winchester’ had been shortened to ‘Liberty of The Clink’.

In 816 a church council ordered that all ecclesiastical establishments must have a place to confine offending monks who might have been neglecting their pious duties through laziness, quarrelling or drinking. In 1076 an archbishop listed the types of punishments that could be used, which included scourging (whipping) with rods and silent solitary confinement.

Southwark is the most ancient of all the London boroughs, older than both Westminster and the City of London. A fact often overlooked is that before the Roman army could build the first ever bridge over the Thames in AD43, they had to make camp on the islands of solid ground amid the marshes that made up the south shore; these were eventually to become Southwark. This southern settlement became the place for soldiers, engineers and builders to relax after a long day building Londinium.

“A prison is a grave to bury men alive… it is a microcosm, a little world of woe, it is a map of misery… It is a place that hath more diseases predominant than the Pest-house in the Plague time, and it stinks more than the Lord Mayors dogge-house, or Paris Garden in August…”